The story behind a photo of a snow monkey using an iPhone (2019) | Hacker News Reader

The story behind a photo of a snow monkey using an iPhone (2019)

iso.500px.com

83 pointsprismatic29 comments

Off-camera flash is a great technique, even if I don't find as many opportunities as I'd like to use it in my own photography. There are a lot of inexpensive RF flash setups available online these days, and while they might not offer the same bulletproof reliability and versatility as a Nikon speedlight kit, with a little thought and practice you can get really amazing results out of a $50-100 investment.

A neat trick is to use your friend's/spouse's phone as an off camera light. doesn't have the same impact of a speedlight for things like freezing motion, but is very effective at getting a 3d light source on a face or whatever.

Would you use it instead of the on-camera flash, or in addition to?

I once used a phone flashlight to paint light in a long-exposure photo of an object, to get the specular highlights right (because I didn't have access to decent lighting otherwise). Basically I wiggled the phone around in the areas where I wanted lights to be, while another camera took a 15sec exposure.

I think it's fine for adding depth to an already lit subject, but not for creating "golden-hour" light as in the article. I had seen his images before, and thought they were sunrise/sunset photos, so I felt tricked when I just read they were artificial lighting. In my mind, nature photography is about capturing nature, subtle improvements and manipulation are to be expected, but not creating it.

What about your appreciation of the images was impaired by this knowledge? Was their capture of unaltered nature more affected by the manipulation of light to artistic effect, or the smartphone with which the monkey was playing?

I'm talking about the two images near the beginning of the article with the warm light on monkey subject, not the one with iphone.

The quote with those images from the photographer says: "In order to create a series of snow monkey images that was different from what already existed, I decided to work with off-camera flash, knowing that it would give me a lot of creative lighting possibilities and total control over the look of the picture. In fact, some of those images won me the International Nature Photographer of the Year title at the International Photography Awards."

In other words, the images that look like a snow monkey watching a winter sun rise or a winter sun set, and all the connotations of expectation or fading warmth that involves, are fake. The light of the sun is part of a natural scene; you can enhance it, push the saturation, but not outright add it when it is not there. To me those 2 images without the information that the warm off-camera light is artificially created are misleading. With that info, my opinion is that those images should not be eligible for nature photography awards, only creative lighting awards.

Spoken like someone unfamiliar with how thoroughly constructed the most striking nature photography typically is. From shooting in wildlife refuges and representing the result as taken wild, to freezing insects so they can be posed and otherwise manipulated in macro work, to cutting and arranging foliage to compose "garden" shots, there's a vast range of what you would call "fakery" that goes into creating those images, even before they come out of the camera into Capture One or Lightroom.

For what it's worth, I'd call those techniques "fakery", too. I don't hold with them, and I don't buy the argument that they're what pros do and it's only from my privileged position as a dilettante hobbyist that I can afford to sneer. (1) But maybe it's worth saving your ire for that kind of nonsense, instead of aiming it at the manipulation of light that's absolutely central to every kind of photography.

And, in any case, I see nothing in the article that suggests the photographer has tried to claim these are sunrise or sunset shots, or indeed anything other than what they actually are, i.e., made with the use of off-camera flash. The interpretation based on which you're calling them fake and misleading isn't his; it is yours.

(1) Which is an argument I've actually heard before, and all I can say is, when I hear it from somebody who can outdo work of mine like https://aaron-m.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/DSC_9393.jpg - taken from a distance of six inches, and with that wasp's sisters buzzing around my head - maybe then I'll think about taking it seriously enough to explain why it's bullshit.

I probably am naive, but I like to think it's only in relation to the domain which has been corrupted with fakery. I use the word corrupted to mean that it's so competitive that everyone at the top is bending the rules or misrepresenting their work--and becoming disconnected from their audience.

FWIW, this photographer fully documents that the golden light was an off-camera flash. But when the image gets published in magazines, I bet that detail is not included. I'm still curious if that information was included in the submission for the photo contests.

Here are 2 images of his where it's clear he used artificial lighting:

https://500px.com/photo/1053642/Full-Moon-Mesa-by-Marsel-van...

https://500px.com/photo/1053782/In-The-Dead-Of-The-Night-by-...

You see those pictures and you think "light painting."

And then there's this one where you think "capturing the last glow of the sun in just the right place:"

https://500px.com/photo/17176603/Double-Light-by-Marsel-van-...

But now that one also looks like artificial lighting. To me, adding sun-colored light that is otherwise absent no longer qualifies as "nature photography." It might make a nice image, but that it wins nature photographer prizes just makes me cynical of the whole industry. Seems like you're saying I should've been cynical all along, but there always comes a day when the realization happens.

No out-takes? Behind the scenes of the tourist trying to retrieve her pilfered phone??

Well, at least he (presumably) bought the rights to the pictures of the monkey stealing the camera.

There'd be no question of rights for any of the shots I saw in the article. My personal property being in your photo, taken in and of a public place, doesn't give me any ownership; if you take a picture of me then it can be more complicated, but an object (or a monkey!) has no likeness rights of which I'm aware.

These aren't selfies, so the relevance is limited, even assuming (imo charitably) that the arguments against copyright in that case are other than specious.

The ownership/copyright to a picture always belongs to the creative person responsible for creating it, that usually is the photographer. Even if the photo shows persons, the photo is owned by the photographer. Depending on the circumstances of where and how the picture was taken, the depicted persons have to to agree to any publication of the photo - that is what model releases are for.

He owns the rights to the pictures he takes. No purchase necessary. Especially in the context of wildlife, there are no human subjects to cloud the issue.

My guess was the same as the parent poster's -- the pictures of the monkey grabbing the phone, from the phone's point of view, belonged to the tourist, right? Because the phone belonged to the tourist? The photographer must have acquired those rights afterwards. (Although I don't recall the outcome of the copyright case of the monkey that took its own photograph back in 2014...)

They would belong to the monkey, actually! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...

(actually it's very controversial)

Apparently only websites that steal photos feel monkeys can own things.

Part of a long list of reasons why I will never support Peta.

And for me, part of a long list of reasons I will never be in favor of copyright (unless turned back on itself, as the GPL or other free licenses allow).

That concerned pictures taken by the monkey. This is pictures taken by a photographer, with his own camera, by his own will. Nothing remotely disputable.

If you're talking about the picture with the title "Lens inspection", this wasn't shot by an iPhone, but by one of his Nikon cameras: https://500px.com/photo/17629635/Lens-Inspection-by-Marsel-v...

I don't think the "lens inspection" picture was taken on an iPhone, not least of which the stolen/drowned one — partly due to its quality, partly due to its name, and partly due to the positioning of the monkey's hands.

I wouldn't, either. Publishing candids of someone from whom you don't have a release is fraught no matter how public the circumstance, and in any case it'd just lead to her being the butt of the world's laughter for fifteen minutes. If it were me, I'd consider that the damnfoolishness of shoving a phone in a monkey's face had neatly constituted its own punishment.

The monkeys are more interesting, anyway.

I find it sad that these monkeys are getting so many flash photos taken of them. I hate flash and I know that it’s coming and why it exists. For a monkey I can imagine it’s even more aggravating.

I can't speak too much about how the monkeys feel about flashes, but when I visited this same spring the monkeys barely even noticed the humans at all.

The springs they soak in were built by a nearby hotel to keep the monkeys out of the hotel pools. They feed them every day to keep them up and away from the hotel.

(Of course, when we walked by the hotel, there was a single monkey soaking in their pool.)

These monkeys are in the first scene of one of my favourite movies.

Baraka (1992) -- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103767

Check it out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbdFW6N782w

Along side all of the more serious bits of the story and comments....

I love the fact that the monkey is subtly giving the photographer the finger....

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